Poison
by Technicolour ME
Summary: The poison of an aching heart never before filled with such emotions and uncertainty. And the balm that calms.


Oh man, this is an old drabble. Like, pre- _Trespasser_ old, and that's been out for two years now (yikes). Ultimately I never had the courage nor the time to really write about Cole and the Inquisitor even though I really do like the pairing - and _Trespasser_ showed that it is entirely possible for Human!Cole to be in a happy, healthy relationship.

As it is, I hope you enjoy this story. I know Lavellan is the most popular of the Inquisitors for romance stuff, but I think Trevelyan can tell just as interesting a story, and I really enjoy the idea of a sheltered circle mage who is comfortable with her lot slowly changing as she's pushed into the politics of the realm.

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There is an ever-dripping poison that slowly slinks through his veins, sprung from the fang of a viper named Despair and eating through his hope like it's soft tissue, rotten and yet ripe for dissolution. To give into Despair is to become it, but Cole can't quite remember what being a spirit of compassion feels like anymore. He still fears the power of a thousand careless thoughts weighing him down, pitching his form black and distorting him until he's hunched and cruel and _forgotten_.

But the Inquisitor doesn't forget. She doesn't let him forget. She watches him with the eyes of a hunter, and the Fades hum around her, a veil shining with magic. It is a very pretty sight, he thinks.

At some point, the line between Cole the human and Cole the helper (because he isn't quite spirit anymore, now is he?) becomes more. It slowly builds to become a fence and then a wall and then a barrier, and one day Cole realizes that his needs are not actually needs. He finds he hurts as often as he helps and that is the day he shouts at Varric (some loud, indecipherable thing that reeks of selfishness) and storms from Skyhold, leading out a horse that dances, thrilled by his nervous energy.

He is not so far gone into human emotions that he kicks the mare he rides. Instead he clings tight to her mane, riding bareback and discovering places chafe when you're solid. At some point he pulls her slow, making her break from a ground-eating lope into a much bouncier trot. She tosses her small, fine head, and he peers between her pricked ears, setting his sights on a grassy clearing just off the mountain path.

It's not something he has much experience with. Some clear part of him, the part that isn't eaten with shame and frustration and this indecipherable heat that just makes everything so warm and stuffy and _useless_ , recognizes the telltale signs of a teenage tantrum, borne from an inability to communicate needs and wants and thoughts and feelings.

And what does he want and need and think and feel? He slides off the horse as soon as her hooves touch grass, trusting her to graze and rest and stay with him. She does, because she's Dennett-bred and Dennett-trained, and his are the best horses in the southern continent. He plops down beside her, unmindful of her hooves, but he has to raise his hand up and bat at her nose when she nudges at his hat. "That's not food."

The Inquisitor finds him a few hours later, on his back in the grass with the hat tipped forward over his head, blotting out the sun and horse and everything that isn't _him_. He won't admit that in his contemplation of himself and the itchiness that stalks his skin like tiny armies of ants, he managed to nod off.

She nudges him with a bronto-hide boot, soft and supple as deerskin, made by their expert craftsmen and harvested by her personally. He tips his head back and hat back and squints at her, some smudgy shadow outlined by a searing yellow sun. She isn't dressed in the fine clothes she typically takes when out adventuring. Instead she's wearing one of her regular outfits, cut military-style with a fitted jacket and fitted pants and a no-nonsense bootcut that threatens a punishment he can't quite tug out. His brain knots together, and he blinks at her, purses his mouth, and finally licks at the bottom lip, hating how cracked it feels.

"Well?" she asks him. "What's wrong, Cole?"

Emotion threatens him again, hot and heady, and his hands curl into the grass, fingers picking and rooting and digging, getting dirt under the nails, "Worms between the fingers, must not look at her, _must not_ —"

He realizes he's speaking what he's hearing, but the words are in his head, not hers, so he's just saying his thoughts aloud and they're _so loud_. He doesn't know what he expects when he abruptly cuts himself off, but he definitely doesn't expect her sitting beside him, plopping down with all the grace of a tavern girl.

He isn't quite sure what to do in the silence. It's not overwhelming like it was before, and he feels the adrenaline that surged through his veins slowly empty out. Her hart meanders alongside his horse, a stag known for its piercing warcry and irreplaceable loyalty. He looks at it, looks at the scar that runs from its right flank and disappears down into its thick belly fur, and he wonders what it would be like to be as simple-minded as a hart or a horse or even the grass he still lies on.

He'd prefer that to all this _emotion._

Cole doesn't even realize he's said as much until the Inquisitor sighs beside him, a wildflower sitting between two slender fingers that pluck and pull at the petals with the delicacy of his knife through an artery.

"It's to be expected," she says softly, still alternating between twirling the flower and destroying it, pieces of crumpled petals and scrapes of green stalk disappearing beneath her nails even as he watches.

"You'll have to wash your hands before dinner," he says, but she ignores him, the corner of her mouth tugged up like she's heard something funny.

"Yes, I will," she agrees after a moment, and he remembers the Ambassador Montilyet's sigh of relief at the Inquisitor's exquisite manners. He tries to push into her thoughts, tug out the loudest strands but the only sound he gets is his own heartbeat, harsh and hammering as if he's back in the White Spire and killing for the first time.

His stomach rolls with the memory, and his lips turn down in a frown.

"What's wrong?" The Inquisitor repeats her question. "You seemed upset earlier."

It's the understatement of the year, and he wishes he could feel everything the way he used to, so bright and clear even though at times it pained him into a state of almost-death.

He shakes his head and remembers when he wandered through her mind, all cramped with responsibilities and burdens to people and names and faces she half-remembered, half-knew. "Am I one of those half-people?" The question slips out, like poison pushed from a wound, and his heart aches.

The Inquisitor's answer is clear and direct. "No. You're Cole. You've always been Cole." Then she adds, just as firmly, "You'll always be Cole."

And he says, "Thank you," and wonders at the sudden softness that fills him up like snoufleur fluff.


End file.
